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I'd bet there are voting rings on HN. Perhaps not as bad as was on Digg. But I'm sure it's here. PG made a comment about it the other day, offhand, in something about getting some code/idea help about fighting it.

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The comment was on Twitter, I think: http://twitter.com/paulg/status/22551773068

Makes me want to look at the HN source, as I find this problem very interesting. Or hoping for a "plan for voting rings" article :-)

Since many people have dynamic IPs, I think tracking geolocation patterns of the first 10-ish votes would be enough to distinguish suspect cases and eventually put them 'on-hold' (HN dosen't really need to get stories on the front page as soon as possible, it's not exactly a breaking news site).

Since people have to be logged in to vote, there is a much easier solution:

Count votes from new users lower.

And count early votes from users often voting on articles posted by a particular person lower.

It can be refined quite a bit...

True, but the problem with voting rings is that links may be submitted by different participants to the ring each time, and if they all have genuine high karma, that is difficult to track down.

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